Revisiting New Zealand (4) - Macquarie Island

Macquarie Island

image a [NOTE: Last year I described my first visit to the Sub Antarctic Islands, including Macquarie Island in “S.B. 2008-BLOGS 5-6” on this site. In order not to subject readers to a rehash of information included in those BLOGS I invite you to go to them if you are interested in earlier outlined information about Macquarie.]

Macquarie Island is at the end of the New Zealand Sub Antarctic group of islands. It is not controlled by New Zealand but by Australia. We spent a full day at sea traveling south from Enderby and Auckland Islands to reach Macquarie Island. This was the first year I was Image B required to have an Australian visa to land on Macquarie. This was also the first time that I saw large icebergs in this area with one grounded near the Macquarie Island Station. On the other side of the world between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia I would be surprised not to see many icebergs in all sizes and shapes. The weather and sea were exceptionally rough and we could not pick up a Ranger at Macquarie Island Station to accompany us. The rules absolutely require on-board Rangers before anyone can set foot on Macquarie. Hoping the weather would moderate, the Captain and Expedition Leader decided to sail toward Lusitania Bay to observe from the Spirit of Enderby the large King Penguin colony that resides there. The weather did improve and the sea calmed sufficiently that we returned to Buckles Bay in the afternoon, picked up the Ranger and then headed immediately to Sandy Beach at the southern end of the island for our first encounter with Royal and King Penguins.

Image C Royal Penguins are endemic to Macquarie Island. Where they go after breeding season is still being studied. They are believed to be cousins of the Macaroni Penguin but are larger. Royals are also the only penguin that has a white face. After nearly being wiped out in the 19^th Century they have staged a strong comeback with colonies on Macquarie with nearly 850,000 breeding pairs or about 2,000,000 individuals. Since they breed only on Macquarie Island and very little is known about their food sources they are considered threatened. On my last visit I felt I had not taken enough images of Royal Penguins and was hoping for sunshine in order to maximize some good facial pictures, plus whatever might surprise me. As in the past I saw a lot of rabbits in the area on the grassy parts of the beach, hopping up the slops, etc.

The start and end of primary seal and penguin oil collection on Macquarie was 1811-1815. There followed a point in time when the last hunter groups could only collect 4 fur seals where just a few years before 200,000-400,000 formerly existed. Elephant Seal populations were reduced by 70-80% over the same short period. As for penguins, among them Royals, Kings, Gentoos and Rockhoppers, the final numbers were so low as to seemingly assure the extinction of penguins on Macquarie. In 1815 the Sydney Gazette was suggesting it was no longer commercially profitable to exploit Macquarie Island. The word went out among these “harvesters” of wildlife that Macquarie was barren of oil producers and decades passed before even casual visitors stopped at the island. Image D For nearly forty years after 1830 only three sailing ships stopped by the island. One of these ships reported four fur seals and no penguins sighted. Seals and penguins began to rebuild their colonies sometime after these early “few sightings” reports. Then in 1873 the first of 30 ships began the slaughter again and it apparently continued until 1889 when it was determined there was nothing to hunt and boil down into oil. (This paragraph is a simple description of a 100-year time frame of extensive commercial exploitation of enormous populations of Fur Seals, Elephant Seals, King and Royal Penguins and anything else that could be rendered into oil, but went unrecorded like New Zealand Sea Lions.)

Image E Other human activities on Macquarie Island were also taking place during this period that would eventually prove nearly as devastating as the “oil collecting period.” Each of the ships that came to the island in the early 19^th Century carried alien invaders in the form of Black Rats and House Mice. Since there were no natural predators on Macquarie Island the rodents that landed began breeding and the populations soon exploded in numbers apparent to the “oil collectors” because the “beasties” began feeding on the landed provisions of the workers. Management accepted the need for cats to be imported to control the rodent population feeding on their provisions. The rats and mice, followed by the cats, moved throughout the island and the rodents and cats began killing and eating the ground dwelling birds. Two endemic species of ground dwelling birds, the Macquarie Island Parakeet and the Macquarie Island Rail, disappeared around 1891 it is believed due to predation by the black rats, house mice, wild rabbits and cats left behind by the early sealers. Rabbits and Wekas, a New Zealand ground dwelling rail, were purposefully let free on Macquarie in order to provide fresh meat to the oil workers and more importantly to any ship wrecked sailors who might happen to land on Macquarie. Rabbits were released on many islands to provide food sources to shipwrecked personnel. No one realized how out-of-control rabbit populations might become.

Macquarie Island became a World Heritage Site in 1997 because of its unique geology, an uplifted part of sub-oceanic planetary crust. However the devastation being caused by introduced species brought attention to bear on the problem of rat, mice, rabbits and cats. First attempts to control the enormous rabbit population, estimated at 130,000 in 1970, was with the introduction of myxomatosis, a virus deadly to most rabbits. By 1980 it was thought that less than 10,000 rabbits were on the island; they had adapted to and survived the myxomatosis introduced man-made plague. Eradication of cats began in 1985 and the last 2,500 were removed in 2000. All the cats were gone but no one apparently anticipated the explosion in rodent and rabbits populations. Without the cats there was no predatory control and the rabbits that had adapted to the myxomatosis could not be controlled with viruses. The physical space, the plant life and the ground nesting birds came under enormous pressure. For example in 2006 a large portion of a hillside at Lusitania Bay slid into the sea burying an important King Penguin breeding colony. The slide was attributed to rains soaking a hillside largely denuded by grazing and burrowing rabbits. Image F

Eventually in 2007 the Tasmanian Government, a part of the Australian Government, produced a plan for the elimination of all alien species at a cost of some $27,000,000 Australian Dollars that would take approximately 7 years to complete. Every approach was to be undertaken from the use of helicopters and specially trained dogs on the ground to new and more toxic poisons. Individuals will/have been appointed with authority to implement the program. The urgency now found in the arena focuses on the near extinction of several species of nesting Albatross colonies and the concern about more ground dwellers and the inability to get reliable counts of these birds.

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Image G The rules of Macquarie Island only allow visitors to be on the beaches and only with Rangers present. The Royal Penguin rookery is located inland on the bluffs above Sandy Beach. The beach itself has a large Fur and Elephant Seal population. King Penguins have also established a large colony here. My interest was in the Royal Penguins and fortunately there were several Royal pathways to and from the ocean that crossed Sandy Beach. These pathways were crowed with the comings and goings of Royal Penguins. I was never going to get nesting observations, or even residential behavior, but I could sit quietly and hopefully get some decent images.

Image H While I sat there I could see many of the Elephant Seals were molting. Fur shedding and replacement takes approximately thirty days and requires a lot of scratching, rubbing and rolling in the sand to relieve the itchy old pelt. They also stay out of the water for the 30 days it takes to complete the molting. I imagine by the end of the molt they are probably hungry and a little grumpy but they did not pay any attention to the people walking around them. I should also note that the King Penguin colony was a-fly with Penguin molted feathers. These feathers were like light, drifting snow and swirled about in the wind. I saw a rabbit that appeared to be gathering some of more downy-like feathers and I presumed it was to line a nest somewhere on the hillside. image I

We stayed at anchor in the safety of Sandy Beach for the night. Early the next morning we returned to Buckles Bay and the Macquarie Island Station. This time it was relatively calm and we took the zodiacs to the beach where more Rangers met us. The number of Rangers made it possible for us to go off in small groups, always accompanied by a Ranger, and explore the beaches on both sides of the isthmus. I noticed the large iceberg that had been grounded behind the Station had moved to the horizon…tides and winds…the big events of Macquarie life.

I realized it was December 24^th when we were invited to the dining hall for tea, scones with jam and cream. Everyone was full of good cheer and as we departed there were many exchanges of “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!” image J

The Rangers continued to walk us around to see the Gentoo Penguin colony at Buckles Bay and look up at the Rockhopper Penguins on the cliffs. Elephant Seals were all about and engaged in scratching off their own fur coats. image K The wind started to rise and the Captain, always alert to getting us back onboard safely, called for us to return to the Spirit of Enderby. We very quickly pulled anchor and set off for Campbell Island.